The biggest, most publicly-visible problem that caused the army to have to step in - the fuel crisis - wasn't really caused by the trucker shortage itself thoug

The biggest, most publicly-visible problem that caused the army to have to step in - the fuel crisis - wasn't really caused by the trucker shortage itself though. It was a media-created phenomenon; breathless front-page headlines about petrol stations running out of fuel caused everyone to go out panic buying, and the infrastructure just doesn't have the capacity to handle everyone filling their tank at once. The actual underlying problems were so tiny that no-one would've noticed them without the media pushing it - a handful of stations out of fuel in the whole country - and as far as I can tell that's what happened in the USA. According to financial publications like Bloomberg and FT they've been having ongoing problems with petrol stations running out of fuel due to a shortage of tanker drivers too, but the mainstream media hasn't covered it so there's been no panic buying, no crisis, people don't even know it's an issue.